1. Field
The subject matter disclosed herein relates to the transmission of data packets. In particular, the subject matter disclosed herein relates to forwarding data packets from source devices to destination devices.
2. Information
Processing platforms typically comprise a host processing system, peripheral devices and an I/O system that enables communication between processes hosted on the host processing system and the peripheral devices. Such an I/O system is typically formed according to one or more standard I/O architectures such as, for example, the peripheral components interconnect (PCI) architecture according to the PCI Local Bus Specification, Rev. 2.2, Dec. 18, 1998, or PCI Express Base Specification, Rev. 1.0, Jul. 16, 2002, promoted by the PCI Special Interest Group.
A communication system may transmit messages or data packets between devices coupled by links according to a data link layer protocol. In such a system, a device may transmit messages or data packets to any of a plurality of other devices through a switch. The switch will typically receive messages or data packets from a source device at an ingress port and forward the messages or data packets to a destination device through an egress port. Prior to forwarding a received message or data packet, however, the switch typically performs a checksum operation on a portion of the received message or data packet to ensure the integrity of the received packet. Such a checksum operation typically introduces latencies in the process of forwarding the message or data packet from the source device to the destination device.